]]>The late night talk show is a dying art form. The success of 30-minute programs like The Daily Show and Colbert suggest that contemporary audiences want their shows to be quick and relevant, rather than a padded hour of fluff and filler, punctuated with fawning interviews.

Tastes may have changed because of the internet age and the more rapid delivery of information. Or they may have changed because these late-night talk show hosts sucked so bad they turned everyone off of the format altogether. We may never know.

Keenan Ivory Wayans – The Keenan Ivory Wayans Show

Premiering in fall of 1997 and running for about seven months, The Keenan Ivory Wayans show was just further proof that perhaps Keenan Ivory Wayans should have stuck with sketch comedy and not branched out into further realms, namely movies and talk shows. His house band was an all-girl band called “Ladies of the Night.”

His show was understandably marketed towards a black audience, but didn’t seem to find an audience with anyone, having gone up against a rival late night show called Vibe.

Unfortunately, if his show would have continued, he might not have found the time to direct Little Man. I hate Little Man.

Pat Sajak – The Pat Sajak Show

Remarkably, The Pat Sajak Show lasted for almost 18 months, which demonstrated that some people actually did want to know what Pat Sajak thought and felt outside the realm of vowel-purchasing.

A month before the show premiered, Sajak admitted he was “not looking to raise the level of TV,” and he planned to “steal liberally from talk shows past and present.” I’m sure that got everyone really fired up about his new talk show, eh? It didn’t help that the show was 90 minutes long, five nights a week. I don’t care how much you like Wheel of Fortune. That’s a shit-ton of Sajak. Too much, frankly.